


Winners and Losers

by mundaneone



Category: Batman (Movies - Nolan)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-12-20
Updated: 2011-12-20
Packaged: 2017-10-27 15:20:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,323
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/297259
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mundaneone/pseuds/mundaneone
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Follows "All the Games we Play"</p>
            </blockquote>





	Winners and Losers

**Author's Note:**

> Originally posted on LJ on 08/09/2008
> 
> This is a follow up fic to All the Games we Play which was for the Batman Kink Meme. The first fic was an alternative take on events and so this takes the alternation a few steps further. So just enjoy it, don’t take it too seriously, it’s just for fun. Also this is dedicated to tyleet27 who wanted to know how the Joker would react after learning the truth from the first fic. Here’s to you, Darling! Hope it’s ok, and sorry if it sucks, I promise to stop writing fics at two in the morning. And remember, AU.

Harvey started when the door to his prison slammed open.  He jumped to his feet, automatically taking a defensive position even though he knew who it was, who it always was.  He had been locked up good and tight by the clown for a solid week without reprieve and the attorney could already feel his sanity slipping through his fingers.  A week in which the Joker had slowly and steadily stripped Harvey of his mental and physical defenses. 

 

The man (and Harvey had long ago given up trying to decide if the Joker even was a man at all) at the door was the incarnation of fury but Harvey refused to be intimidated.  Slowly the district attorney lowered his arms and forced himself into a more passive stance.  And after a pregnant silence the clown spoke.

 

A wry chuckle, followed softly by, “Oh Harvey, you lied to me!”

 

Harvey tilted his head silently to the side.  It was a simple acknowledgment, not an answer.  He had told the clown many lies, it was really only a matter of which lie the other was referring to. Harvey shoved his hands into his new suit (and really he wondered why the Joker even bothered bringing him such gifts) and smiled.  “How so, clown.”

 

In response the Joker's hand flashed to his purple clad arm and wretched an unmistakable bat shaped weapon from his flesh.  It was flung in Harvey's direction but the attorney refused to flinch.  Harvey's head turned at the solid sound of the metal weapon embedding itself into the wall beside him and in the next instant he found himself slammed against the solid surface by the very alive weight of his insane captor.

 

"You Lied to me, Harvey! To  _me_!  I thought we were pals,” like the snake he was the Joker’s tongue darted out across his lips, “and pals don’t betray one another.  Do they?”

 

Harvey laughed, deep and mildly demented, “Of course not.  They just lock each other up in a cage and fuck them whenever they get a little too excited after a day of ‘fun’.”  At the crazed stare directed at him Harvey just grinned, “Don’t tell me I’ve got it wrong.  We both know I don’t.” 

 

Fingers clenched in his hair tightly and Harvey winced as he was forced to meet the Joker’s incensed stare head on.  “I ran into a bit of trouble today, Harv.  Want to know why?  I think you already know.  But I’ll tell you anyway because friends tell each other things.”  The Joker’s eyes were a shade or two madder than usual, and Harvey blandly wondered if today would be the day the Joker finally slit his throat.  “See I ran into a mutual friend of ours, a friend who until today I thought was you.  And that doesn’t sit well with me, Not One Bit.” 

 

A shaky breath spilled from Harvey’s lips and the laughter bubbled from him endlessly.  “Oh!  Oh you really thought-”  The chuckles wouldn’t stop and Harvey didn’t care.  He didn’t care that the Joker looked beyond furious, beyond insane.  It didn’t matter anymore.  There was nothing left of the Harvey Dent from before, no reason for him to be rescued.  “You really, honestly thought that The Bat would want you?  Would let you do everything I let you do?”  The hand in his hair tightened but Harvey would not be cowed.  “He’s stronger than me.  He’s something more than me.  And he will never,  _never_  give in to you.”  The Joker flung him harshly to the floor and Harvey laughed and laughed.  Hell he damn near  _giggled_  because, really, this was too much.

 

“He’s better than you!”  A gloved fist collided with his cheek and Harvey burst into another fit of chuckles, blood dribbled down his chin, and despite the pain Harvey felt nothing but glee. 

 

“He’s better than all of us!  He’s paving the way-“

  


The Joker settled onto his hips, gloved hands clenching tightly at his jaw, a wicked smile made even wider by those ridiculous scars.  "Oh but Harvey," and he _hates_ how the Joker says his name, in a drawn out drawl that just screams of sex, "that's not how it is at _all_!  You see, Harv, it's you.  You're their 'white knight' and you always have been.  The final hope of Gotham,"  the Joker leaned down, warm breath puffing against his face as the clown panted out a laugh, "and look what I've done to you!"  Demented giggles, "I've taken the white knight, and I've twisted him to suit me.  We're still a pair Harv, a matching set.  Even if you aren't the Bat, even if you never were."

 

And Harvey wanted to laugh again because the damn clown actually sounded hurt by that.  His hands came up, fingers hooking into talons, and dragged his nails down the Joker’s face.  “Sure thing, Babe.  We’re a damn mirror image!”  Harvey laughed, flung his head backwards from the utter absurdity of it all.  He could feel his hips thrusting upward but couldn’t bring himself to care.  It’d been a week and Harvey had accepted that somewhere along the way he had cracked and he couldn’t be repaired.  And really, all he wanted was to get his hands on one of the Joker’s damned knives and shove it between those darkly painted eyes to the hilt.

 

Now  _that_  would be a funny sight. 

 

 

“Is this the part where you tell me how you got those scars?”

 

When they found him Harvey was doped up on enough pain killers that it surprised them he was even conscious.  (And Harvey never did figure out why the Joker gave them to him at all.)  The district attorney had been seated rather dejectedly on the courthouse steps, idly fingering the little metal bat the clown had let him keep.  There were several scars, small ones, nothing that really distracted from the attorneys looks on half of his face.  On the other a wide, split grin identical to the Joker’s own stretched across the once perfect flesh.

 

Harvey had stared upward blankly at Rachel who rushed to his side, sobbing in sorrow and relief.  He licked his lips, once, twice and again.  The first had been to wet the painfully chapped feel they held.  The second had been in morbid fascination over his suddenly elongated smile.  And the third, oh the third…

 

 

"He said that half of me would always be his.  Half to the Bat, half to the Clown. Said that was how Harvey was supposed to fall.” 

 

Silence.

 

“We’re all playing the same game, but none of us have the same rules.” 

 

Rachel reached up to run her fingers in horror over the scars and Harvey flinched away.  Those belonged to the clown.  They were the Joker’s scars; he didn’t want Rachel anywhere near them.

 

She took him home and rocked him back and forth in their bed even though he never closed his eyes.  Little cards and presents kept showing up at their doorstep.  Things like fingers, scraps of flesh.

 

There was a head once.

 

Another time Harvey had opened the brightly colored box, half hoping it would be a bomb and that everything would come to an end in a lovely bang and instead opened it to see some poor saps once beating heart with a note that had been skewered with one of the Joker’s plentiful knives.  The note had been signed with hearts and kisses.

 

He’d thrown both the heart and the note into the fire and watched the flames dance.

 

The Joker and the Bat could keep playing as long as they wanted but Harvey was done.  He had tried and failed.  He had lost the game.

 

And when The Batman had stepped into his home with Rachel’s lifeless body cradled delicately in his arms, another of the Joker’s notes pierced to her chest, Harvey realized he had lost far more than that. 


End file.
